Ever since reading the scene in Catching Fire where Katniss and Peeta watch the 50th Hunger Games, I wanted to know more about what happened in the arena that year. Haymitch not only won, he won while competing against twice as many tributes. I knew that there had to have been something special about Haymitch for him to have beaten those odds.
Every twenty five years there is a special games, called the Quarter Quell. Before the tributes are selected, the Capital announces an additional condition for the games that year. For the first Quell the condition was that the male and female tributes had to be chosen by the people of the districts rather than pulled from a lottery by a Capital representative, making the punishment even more cruel. The additional bit of barbarism for the second Quell was that there would be twice as many tributes, two males and two females from each district. Haymitch was in the clear once the second male name was called, but due to a series of events that made a bad situation even worse, Haymitch was punished by becoming the second male for district twelve.
Although there have been some improvements in the way tributes are treated since the 10th Hunger Games, the girls and boys are still viewed as uncivilized animals. They are carted around in handcuffs in windowless vans, and not much is done to ensure that they arrive to the games unblemished and unharmed. The games back then were not the well oiled machine that we see in the original trilogy. I do believe that some of the events that occurred paired with the rebellious actions of Haymitch influenced the way in which the games were run from then on. In the original trilogy there are several mentions of unfortunate incidents that have befallen victors after the games, punishments doled out by President Snow to those that were not shy about showing their disdain for the Capital. We get to experience the very worst of what Snow can do to someone who rebels, and Haymitch suffers greatly for the multiple acts he commits both before the games and during his time in the arena.
I love that we are getting multiple prequels from the author years after she wrote one of the most recognizable young adult series of this moment in time. This book made me want even more. I didn’t even care that this book was incredibly sad, I loved finding out more about the history of the games and getting to know more about characters that we are already familiar with. There are other victors I would love to have get an entire book dedicated to their story. I think Johanna Masons would be equally as tragic as Haymitchs, but it would be interesting to see how she turned her loss and sorrow into anger rather than depression. I can only hope we are so lucky as to get another prequel out of Suzanne.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 